


tackle or touch

by swingingparty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen, Near Death Experiences, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Sibling Bonding, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25933495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingingparty/pseuds/swingingparty
Summary: TG: i had a dreamTG: another one
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Dave Strider
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	tackle or touch

**Author's Note:**

> another dawn another day of me writing 10k+ strilondes fics eek title is from the way its always been by brandon flowers

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at ??? --

TG: hey

TG: are you awake

TG: i had another dream

TG: yo

TG: lalonde

TG: as much as i love dumping enough bullshit to keep a whole team of freud dick-sucking creeps occupied for the next century into an empty pesterchum window i think this process is gonna be a lot more groundbreaking in terms of your extended psychological dismantlement of me if youre like 

TG: here to do said dismantlement in real time

TG: rose

TG: rose come on

TG: dude ive seen you sleep like four times since we got on this stupid meteor at most and yet the one time im actually offering my poor brain up so you can pick it to pieces youre miraculously dead to the entire fucking world

TG: how does that make sense

TG: hello

TG: rose

TG: rose lalonde

TG: whats youre middle name

TG: you know mine and never shut the fuck up about it so i feel like i kinda desevre to know yours at this point

TG: itd be like emotional retribution for how much you make fun of me or something

TG: dude

TG: are you seriously asleep right now

TG: are you ghosting me to mack on your girlfriend

TG: not girlfriend sorry

TG: alien girl who is your friend who you get weirdly defensive over whenever i call her your girlfriend 

TG: which sort of makes me think there might be some girlfriend action going on there but thats beside the point

TG: also dont answer that

TG: the macking on bit

TG: i thought about it for like five seconds and realized how much i really dont want you to confirm anything about that 

TG: like ever

TG: shit i feel like i gotta go think about karkat popping a blood vessel over the fact everyones ignoring his college dissertation length weekly memos about how hes going to fly off the fucking handle if one more poor schmuck ignores his messages about outlawing sloppy interspecies makeouts brb

TG: ok im back

TG: i feel cleansed

TG: thinking about that dude losing his shit never fails to make me feel better 

TG: its like free therapy but so much funnier holy shit

TG: are you still asleep

TG: jesus fuck lalonde

TG: this is so disappointing

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now online! --

TG: god there you are

TG: i was like six seconds from giving up and going back to bed

TG: well not going back to bed

TG: probably going into the kitchen and spitefully eating all your cereal and then pounding on karkats door until he wakes up and threatens to punt me into deep space before making me watch troll love actually for the fourth time this week

TG: you know the usual

TG: rose

TG: are you planning on saying anything at any point

TG: like i can definitely keep the conversation going by myself no biggie but if thats the level im going to be reduced to itd probably be helpful to know so i can pace myself or something

TG: dont wanna blow through all my talking points in ten minutes flat you feel

TG: hello

TG: okay now i think youre just doing this on purpose

TG: rose

TT: Can you give me five seconds, please?

TT: The one time I actually seem to be on my way towards securing a night of uninterrupted, peaceful sleep and suddenly you decide there is no moment more opportune than now to start messaging me so much my phone is permanently vibrating from across the room.

TG: im thinking of a really funny joke right now

TG: wanna hear it

TT: Not in the slightest.

TT: I’m assuming there’s nothing within that tirade that I should bother reading, right?  


TG: hey hey hey

TG: dont jump the gun here

TT: What do you want?  


TG: still think you should scroll through

TG: i had a lot of really insightful breakthroughs had a lot of sick ass realizations about myself

TG: you missed a lot of sweet sweet development for one dave elizabeth strider seriously 

TG: like fuck you and your neurotic obsession with your character arc or whatever i just blew that shit out of the water with how many conclusions i drew about myself back then

TT: I’m not “obsessed” with my character arc.

TT: In a neurotic manner or otherwise.

TG: i would say its like 80% neurotic 

TG: at least

TG: like thats being nice

TT: What’s the other twenty percent?  


TG: i dont know

TG: maybe spite

TG: yeah spite that sounds like you

TG: i mean really when you break shit down to the bare bones or whatever is there anything you dont do thats either motivating by your raging unmedicated psychological disorders or the desire to piss off whatever celestial power is still giving three quarters of a fuck about you

TG: the answer to that is no by the way

TG: or i guess sometimes you do shit because of like

TG: you being gay

TG: like you letting kanaya use you as a human pincushion last month yeah that shit was definitely motivated by the homosexual agenda

TG: honestly i think everything you do around kanaya is motiviated by the homosexual agenda at least a little bit

TG: maybe spite too but in like

TG: a lesbian way you know

TG: trying to one up her or prove her wrong but because you wanna make out with her not because youre like actually pissed at her

TG: man you are so fucking weird now that i think about

TG: why dont you just flirt with her nicely like a normal person

TG: is this some troll blackrom shit is that whats going on

TG: are you in shovels with kanaya

TT: It’s called spades, first of all.

TG: i know that

TG: i was making a joke

TT: The subtleties of your comedy know no bounds, truly.

TG: youre just jealous that im fucking hilarious and you arent

TT: You know, for all your protestations that keeping up a one-sided conversation with me tonight would be such an unending struggle, you seem to be doing a fine job of it right now.

TT: I honestly think I could fall back asleep and you wouldn’t come close to noticing for at least the next half an hour.

TT: Though I suppose a formal departure from this bizarrely tangential conversation you seem to be attempting to have with yourself might be more acceptable in polite society.

TG: did you hear that thud in the distance

TT: No.

TG: ok well there was a thud in the distance 

TG: you should really pay attention to your surroundings more and join us in the real world

TG: the real world where i am falling off my bed laughing my ass off cause you just implied karkat motherfucking vantas is a member of polite society

TG: like god damn lalonde 

TG: i cant even come up with a metaphor to describe how hilarious that is

TG: its just so fucking funny oh my god

TT: It’s an umbrella term.

TG: the dude literally calls me a fuckass so much i think hes forgotten what my actual name is

TT: That seems like a you problem.

TG: if i asked him to define the word polite for me im pretty sure hed say it was like some sort of terminal illness and then throw a fucking dictionary at my head 

TT: Again, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s a you problem.

TT: And as endlessly fascinating as the aggressively heterosexual nature of your relationship with Karkat Vantas is, if all you woke me up to do was wax poetic on how much you allegedly can’t stand him despite spending virtually every waking moment attached to his hip, I’m thinking I might go back to bed.

TT: By all means, though, continue talking in my absence.

TT: Perhaps when I awake you’ll have actually reached some groundbreaking conclusions about yourself regarding him.

TG: okay okay wait

TG: ill shut up about karkat

TT: Quite the impressive feat.

TT: I hope this process isn’t too taxing on you.

TG: hilarious

TG: goddamn we should keep a running tally of how many times i fall out of bed laughing at the shit you say

TG: in another life you coulda been a comedian honestly

TT: Such a shame my talents are confined to a meteor inhabited by two humans and four aliens hurtling through the depths of deep space towards probable doom, then.

TG: ever the fucking optimist you are huh

TT: I try my best.

TT: What did you want to talk about?  


TG: i had a dream

TG: another one

—

The chain is huge.

Dave supposes that isn’t really unnatural in itself. The weird thing about Derse — well, aside from literally everything else about it—is how oddly skewed the proportions of everything around him feels, like someone’s hacked into the code of the spacetime fabric around them and deleted a few lines: not enough to fuck things up irreperably, but enough to make shit feel distinctly weird. The surroundings—all purple tinted gothic architecture that looks like it crawled assbakcwards out of one of the weird Lovecraftian tomes Rose is probably going to line her coffin with when she dies—feel distorted, warped just a little too much out of shape to be able to gloss over. Dvae feels both too big and too small in the space, a bizarre combination that leaves a knot in the pit of his stomach and half-imperceptible tremors working their way all throughout his limbs. He feels like any motion is too sudden of one; even if he so much as inhales too prominently, the fabric of the whole universe around him will shatter into a billion bite-sized pieces at his feet.

Which is sort of a problem—the spacelessness, the distortion, the heavy-light feeling of a sick something any movement sends rattling through his body—because of the chain.

God, the fucking chain. 

Dave knows what he has to do here. He’s not entirely sure  _ how  _ he knows – Rose might’ve actually faxed him some twenty-page memo on exactly how he’s supposed to blow himself and a sun double the size of the universe to literal oblivion and back for all he can remember now—but the sense of certainty that shoots through him, almost overpowering the weird shivery feeling for a second, as he stares at the huge, impossibly fucking  _ huge _ figure of the chain typing Derse to its moon is unmistakeable.

A sword appears, stuck hilt-deep in the ground before him, and the certainty only grows. Beside him, Rose watches as he tugs at the thing, barely biting back a hiss of frustration as it snaps clean in half—motherfucker, what is he supposed to do about  _ that? _ —her face impassive as anything. Dave’s neck-deep in the process of learning the specific nicitites of her habits of expression but he wouldn’t call it too much of a stretch to say that he’d been starting to get a handle on her poker face a little, but right now he might as well be staring at an honest-to-god brick wall for all the cues he’s able to pick up on from her. Her jaw is set in characteristically hard, chin tipped upwards in what always reads like a challenge, eyes almost bordering on glassy. There’s a ball of yarn in one of her hands and John’s ratty bunny in the other and an expression of pure neutrality on her face, like she’s watching him choose out a box of cereal in a grocery store, not literally embark on the process of piloting an entire fucking moon to the edge of the known universe in a half-bit suicide mission she cooked up.

“Fuck am I supposed to do now?” Dave says, swinging an arm in the direction of the broken sword. His voice echoes weirdly around the space, ricocheting around him in a way that makes his head ache. If Rose feels the same, though, she doesn’t even come close to letting it show. Instead, she looks down at her hand where she’s still white-knuckling her ball—why does she even have that thing, anyways?—blinks once, and then looks back up at him.

“I think that’s supposed to happen.” Even her voice is measured. 

“You think?”

A brief flicker of dry irritation flits across her face, and Dave does a mini-celebration in the back of his head. The whole premise of what’s happening right now—and more importantly, what’s  _ going  _ to happen—is fucked up enough as it is; the last thing either of them need to deal with on top of everything else is Rose going all living-dead on them.

“Yes, I think.” Her voice is still flat, almost disinterested, but there’s a familiar bite starting to creep back into it now. “This is a novel experience for me too, you know.”

“You mean you haven’t accompanied your paradoxical brother to the literal edge of the fucking universe in prep for him about to blow his ass back to the 14th century with a bomb the size of a small planet?” Dave lets himself smirk a little; come on, if it’s not funny, it’s just fucking depressing, and he really doesn’t have time to deal with that. “Weak sauce, Lalonde.”

Dave’s half-expecting some pithy retort from her in return, a kick-off to some convoluted fake argument about literally nothing important that will probably end up lasting way longer than either of them have time for, but Rose just huffs a little under her breath before nodding at the sword Dave’s still resting his hand on. “Focus.”

“Damn, tough crowd. You gonna start throwing tomatoes at me next or what?”

The corner of Rose’s mouth twitches a little. “Dave. Stop stalling. We need to hurry.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Just trying to lighten the mood here a little.” In front of them the sword sits, still very much broken and totally fucking useless. There’s something about it just sitting there, hovering almost menacingly in the air before him that Dave’s stomach wrench uncomfortably. For a second, he thinks of blood on his hands and his legs swinging over the cliff drop and triangular sunglasses with scratches on the rims before he decides to stop thinking entirely. He has a feeling none of that shit matters now, anyways.

“Use the sword, Dave,” Rose says, tone a little more insistent now. He breaks his impromptu staring match with a fucking piece of metal to look back up at her. With her hair falling into her eyes and her robes fluttering in the breeze around her and the look on her face that makes her look years older, Dave almost gets the feeling that they’ve been here before: together at the edge of a universe, literal minutes from total fucking anniahlation. The memory feels weirdly adjacent to everything else, sort of like what watching all the doomed Daves getting their asses handed to them felt like: something both directly relating to him and as far removed as possible. 

It feels weird to think about, though, like he’s trying to scratch an itch on a part of his brain that doesn’t exist, so he adds that to the list of things he’s devoting as much energy as humanly possible to not thinking about from here on out and fixes Rose with a baleful stare. The shades probably mask a lot of the intended effect, but from the way her eyebrow arches at him in return, she gets the idea.

“No shit,” he says anyways, careful to keep his tone dry just in case. “I’m sort of looking for the  _ how  _ of it all, though. That’s one big ass chain and this is one broken ass sword, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I had.” Rose turns the ball of yarn over in her hand, still meeting his gaze unblinkingly. “It doesn’t matter, though. The chain will break regardless of the alleged shittiness your weapon may possess.”   


“How do you know that?”

“What part of  _ we need to hurry  _ did you not understand?”

“Okay, okay.” He ducks his head, hand back on the hilt of the sword. “Chill.”

In the end, she’s right: the sword cuts through the chain like a knife through butter. Dave hits the ground on his knees, weird chunks of petrified metal floating around him like some sort of aura. The air tastes staler now, filling his lungs with a weird pressureless sensation, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s because they’re starting to take off now. Dave isn’t the guy to go to for literal;ly anything related to momentum or velocity or the spacetime principles of physics in the slightest, but even he knows that this moon is moving, and it’s moving  _ fast.  _

Which means it’s about time to say goodbye to one half of the crew.

This is the hard part, the thing Dave  _ wants  _ to put at number one on his list of things to not think about but can’t. Because unlike his bro or the dead Daves or how ridiculous it is that he’s about to cap off his sweet, sweet thirteen years of life with some batshit suicide mission his ectosister cooked up while definitely under the influence of a bunch of Lovecraftian death gods, bidding Rose goodbye is sort of something he has to deal with right now.

Goddamnit.

Dave rocks back on his heels, wiping dust from his palms. In the gloom of the Ring, his skin looks eerily bright, the scars on the backs of his hands and forearms almost glowing. There are half-healed scratches on his knuckles he can’t remember getting. Rose’s gaze feels like it’s burning two twin holes straight through the top of his head.

He takes a deep breath in, feels the lightness filling his lungs, shooting straight to his head in dizzying spikes, and looks up to meet her eyes.

Rose shakes a strand of her hair out of her eyes. She blinks once, long and slow, tipping her head to the side, and then smiles in a way that makes Dave’s entire body go cold. 

“Think it’s time.” Dave’s voice sounds tinny as it echoes around his own head. “For you to split, I mean.”

Rose’s lips quirk again. The only discernible movement she makes is to turn the yarn ball over in her hand some more, like she’s inspecting it for some tiny speck of damage even as she keeps her gaze skewering through Dave. Other than that, though, she looks like going anywhere is the furthest thing from her mind right now.

Dave frowns. So much for hurrying up, then. Figures. “Rose—”

“I’m sorry about this,” she cuts in. Now her eyes are on the yarn, staring at it like it’s the veritable fucking Holy Grail, or something. “If I had another option, I would’ve taken it.”

The cold feeling drops about eighty degrees below zero. Something sick and heavy starts to build in the pit of Dave’s stomach in time with him rising to his feet. “What?”

She blinks, once. At her side, her free hand twitches. “I’m sorry,” she says again, her voice suddenly small and shaky and hollow and a million other sentiments Dave would’ve assumed would only come out of her mouth if someone, like, started brutally murdering all her friends right before her very eyes. He opens his mouth to say something— _ what the fuck is going on?  _ feels like it might be a great place to kick things off from—when Rose jerks back. For a second, Dave thinks she’s being attacked by some weird Furthest Ring demon-type shit and his hand jumps for his sword, but then he realizes she isn’t fending off some Lovecraftian terror but winding up, ball of yarn aiming right at his head.

“What—” Dave starts. There’s a lot more queued up behind that, but before it can all come out in what he’s praying will be a really well-articulated and thoughtful stream of word vomit, Rose releases the ball straight at the center of his forehead.

He’s out cold before he hits the ground. 

— 

TT: Okay.

TT: What about?

TG: really

TG: thats all you got for me right now

TG: maybe dying really did do one hell of a psychological number on you god damn 

TG: the rose i used to know would literally be at my door foaming at the mouth in five seconds flat ready to crack my poor defenceless skull open like a walnut if i told her i wanted to talk about my dreams

TG: you wouldve physically morphed into freud himself by now

TG: gone all bald and bearded and german 

TT: He was Austrian.

TG: ok that feels like the part of my sentence that i really dont need you to be addressing

TG: are you good

TG: is this really rose right now

TG: am i being pranked

TG: god fucking damnit egbert is this you

TG: are you seriously fucking with me right now

TG: do your lame ass antics know no bounds where is stupid bird me is he not doing anything to keep you in line

TG: wait fuck that wheres jade

TG: she has more brains than the two of you put together times like eight billion

TG: john put jade on

TG: i need to chew her ass out for letting you pull shit on me man seriously this is unbelievable amounts of uncool

TG: the real not soulless and characteristically interested in beating my psyches head in with a rock rose is going to literally put your head through a wall if she comes back to us and finds youve been messing with her pesterchum dude its not worth it

TT: Are you done?

TG: yeah i think im at a good stopping point

TG: anyways whats wrong with you

TT: As always, your eloquence is outdone only by your tact.

TT: This is Rose.

TT: I’m not sure why that needs genuine clarification, saying as John and Jade have both been out of commission from our end since we set foot on this meteor and I can’t imagine their first course of action upon being able to reconnect with us would be to prank you by assuming my identity, but here we are.

TG: ok one

TG: egbert would so do that

TG: thats exactly the sort of supremely unfunny thing he would find hysterical

TG: second you still havent answered my question by the way

TT: Am I John?

TT: Didn’t we literally just cover this?

TG: no dumbass whats wrong with you

TG: like i said youre usually bouncing off the fuckin walls at an opportunity like this seeing you respond this way is honestly a little freaky

TT: Dave, the last time you wanted to talk to me about your dreams you launched into a breakdown of the lore of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff that lasted literally an hour and a half.

TT: I was in danger of entering a catatonic state throughout at least half of it.

TG: ok well sbahj is fucking tight and im sorry your taste sucks

TT: Whatever helps you sleep at night.

TT: Also speaking of which, my body clock is currently telling me it’s three in the morning. It’s also telling me that I am very, very tired.

TT: So you’ll forgive any lack of enthusiasm on my part right now, hopefully. 

TG: well ramp that shit up lalonde cause this is gonna be good

TG: this is some cold hard wacked up bullshit right here

TG: no mentions of sbahj as far as the eye can see

TT: I’m holding you to that.  


TT: So.

TT: The dream?

TG: the dream

TT: Are we going to have to play twenty questions with this or are you going to be concise?

TG: you know what

TG: just for you ill spit it out

TG: thank me later

TT: I’ll mark it on my calendar.

TG: it was about me dying

—

It’s about three and a half seconds after opening his eyes to his dream room on Derse that Dave realizes he has been well and truly fucked over.

“Fuck,” he mutters, swinging his legs off the stacked mattresses serving as his bed. There’s the now-familiar weird moment where all the similarities between his room on Derse and the one he used to inhabit back on earth, back before the game, back before they all took trigger-happy to the next level and literally ended the fucking universe slam into him like a swerving eighteen-wheeler, but then Dave sees a glint of purple in the sky through the window and every thought of Texas and all the bullshit that comes with it fades from mind in a flash.

“Goddamnit _ ,  _ Rose,” he hisses, moving to the window and jerking the curtains aside so he can get an unobstructed view of the moon his stupid fucking sister is literally piloting to the edge of the universe all by herself. “God fucking  _ damnit.”  _

Dave’s at least eighty percent certain that impulse decisions here are going to piss Rose off to no extent at best and literally get him getting killed at worst, and yet there is no part of him that really stops to think for longer than a split second before his hands are fumbling with the window latch, ready to throw it open and dive on out in pursuit of the entire fucking moon Rose is at the helm of—because, when it comes down to the wire, what other conclusion can he really come to in this situation other than going the fuck after Rose and making sure she doesn’t literally kill herself because that was  _ not  _ the fucking plan they agreed on, really?

Exactly. Dave’s fingers curl around the brittle wood of the window frame, splinters biting up into his palms—for a kingdom of such prestige, at least as far as Rose talks about it, Derse has got some pretty shitty architectural standards going on—as he frowns. Exactly.

Maybe he should be hesitating, really. This is a suicide mission, after all. Even with the dreamself he’s about half certain he still has in this timeline, Dave isn’t an idiot: he knows what dying is, and knows there’s going to be a pretty hefty laundry list of shit to sort through if that does happen to him, even if he comes back to life at the end of it. This isn’t a doomed version of himself he’s talking about, after all—this is him, the  _ real  _ version of him. 

Well. All the messing around with timelines has kind of opened his eyes to how fucking dumb thinking of himself as the  _ real Dave  _ is, but still. Dying is dying. There aren’t a lot of other ways to spin it.

And, more to the point, really, Rose  _ doesn’t  _ have an expendable self left to toss away on some backwards-ass plan like this. She already lost that to going off the walls and getting turned into a fucking kebab by the protoyped version of Jade’s wackjob anthropormorphic dog; she dies here, and she dies for good.

One of the really, really awesome parts about this game has been the total destruction of the fundamentals on which Dave built his entire life. Any plans he might have had for the future? Might be a little hard to execute now, saying as the world literally no longer exists and he’s probably going to be dead within a week. A vague understanding of his home planet and the people that lived there? Well, actually, his entire species was modeled after a cohort of literal aliens and then catapulted a few thousand years into the future to start building the world Dave and his friends had literally just ended, like, a day ago. A sense of self? Turns out he’s a time travelling ectobaby who now spends his days getting trolled by girls on the internet and watching alternate versions of himself die. His background? His family? His upbringing? Aside from the fact that his bro isn’t even his bro and also now dead, turns out literally everything the dude did to him growing up—from the strifes to the ninja stars to the fucking puppets  _ everywhere _ —wasn’t, like, normal. At all. Not even in the slightest. Awesome.

But regardless of all that, there’s one thing he’s still pretty fucking certain about: Rose dying something he can one hundred percent do without ever happening. Especially if it’s the sort of scenario that he could’ve easily stopped from taking place.

The center of his forehead aches for a second, almost like it’s shooting him a little reminder. In the sky, the moon is growing smaller and smaller by the second, and Dave grits his teeth and kicks the window open. He’s halfway out, already giving his insides the pep talk they’re really going to need if he’s going to catch up with Rose in time, when the computer in the corner of the room chimes.

Dave starts so hard he almost falls off the ledge. He manages to cling to the frame enough so that he doesn’t literally go plummeting to his death and turns around to glare at the offending piece of technology. Holy fuck, if that’s another memo from the Vantas creep—

But the text suddenly clogging his Pesterchum window isn’t grey; it’s a too-familiar purple, a stream of commas and apostrophes and stupidly big words that Dave’s always been convinced Rose doesn’t even know the meaning of.

Outside, the moon is looking less like a moon and more like a speck of barely-visible purple against the sky. Dave bounces his gaze between it and the computer for a few seconds too long, caught in between an indecision he doesn’t really understand.

She has time. The journey is a long one, even with Rose cruise controlling the thing at a breakneck pace. He has time to check the messages, time to respond, time to see if maybe she’s pestering him to let him know that this is actually a huge joke of John-levels of stupidity and they don’t actually have to fight over the title of Thirteen Year Old Kid Willing To Blown Themself To Literal Oblivion And Back For The Sake Of Everyone Else. 

But even as he swings his legs back into the room, hops off the ledge, hurries over to the computer and throws himself down at the desk chair in front of him, Dave can’t shake the clawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that though ignoring Rose’s messages probably wouldn’t have been the best move, all things considered, this choice isn’t the right one either. 

—

TT: Wow.

TG: told you it was a doozy

TT: I mean,

TT: If anything, I think it was your unusual directness that threw me the most.

TT: Other than that, though,

TT: All things considered, dreams of death, whether it be yours or mine or someone else’s entirely don’t feel like they would be entirely shocking occurrences, no?

TG: it sticks with you huh

TT: Exactly. 

TT: The manifestations of trauma don’t exactly stop once you exit the waking world. They stay with you even as your main plane of operation switches to a subconscious one.

TT: If anything, the reduced levels of control you’re able to exercise over your thought processes make your consciousness even more susceptible to the resurgence of traumatic or trauma-aligned experiences or memorie.

TG: woah woah woah

TG: slow your roll mrs freud

TT: That’s the second Freud joke you’ve made.

TT: I can practically see it fast passing the distance between adolescence and middle age as we speak.

TG: ok first of all

TG: i know you dont feel spiritually complete or whatever without shitting out ridiculously verbose and stupid metaphors at least three times a day

TT: You’re one to talk.

TG: but for the love of god please just say its getting old like a normal person

TG: second of all i dont have trauma

TG: lets just fucking

TG: knock that train off the rails right now

TG: its already within viewing distance of the migraine-inducing conversations station and i swear if it pulls up to the platform im doing a backflip off the side of the meteor

TT: I’ll be sure to alert Karkat.

TT: I can imagine such a sight would bring him more joy in that instant than he’s collectively felt throughout his thirteen years of existence.

TT: It’d be a good experience for him.

TG: yeah the dudes heart would like

TG: stop

TG: straight up it would just stop beating

TT: To return to the point at hand, though.

TT: I’m not sure how else you’d prefer me to dress up your experiences without falling into overt dishonesty, but whatever. If you want to be weird about certain words, be my guest.

TT: But even then, aren’t comments like that what you’re hoping to get out of this conversation? Orexpecting, at the very least?

TT: I mean, you do want me to pick your brains right now, yes? That’s the reason you texted me fifty billion times at four in the morning?

TG: i mean

TG: yes and no

TG: it sounds legitimately dumb as fucking rocks when i type it out so like i dont need you to point that out or anything 

TG: just a heads up 

TG: like if you wanna put a moratorium on the production line at the rose lalonde bitchy remarks emporium that would be sick

TG: cause this shit is like

TG: veering into a weird place

TG: even without you making it all about trauma or my irreparably damaged psyche or how the fact that i like drawing dicks on karkats face when hes sleeping is obvious proof that ive been harboring some long suppressed desire to mack on every dude ive ever set eyes on 

TG: or however else youre gonna spin this

TG: like its just like weird in itself

TG: i dont know

TT: I’m not sure I understand.

TG: basically i wanna talk to you

TT: Is that not what we’re doing right now?

TG: i wanna talk to you about my dream

TT: Again, see above.

TG: no no not like that

TG: like

TG: i wanna talk to you about what my dream was about

TG: cause you were also in it 

TG: and you died too

TT: Okay.

TT: What was the premise?

TG: all that shit with the tumor and the green sun

TT: Ah.

TG: yeah

—

_ I guess I could wake you back up if you really want. _

_ ok then do it _

_ But you have to promise to stay put. _

_ Don’t try to stop me. Just let it go. _

_ but this was my mission _

_ It really makes no sense for you to go. This was never your preoccupation.  _

_ They selected me a long time ago. _

_ why would they drag me into it just to have me make a map and then let you ditch me _

_ theyve obviously been gunning for me too _

_ Yes, they helped you chart a path through the Ring. And they will open that path for a pilot they have marked. _

_ I believe I fit the description. I’m not sure about you. _

_ why do you think that _

_ I am the pilot. _

_ That’s all there is to say on the matter. _

_ but i dont want you to die _

—

TT: I’m struggling to understand why you didn’t lead with that.

TT: We could’ve saved ourselves veritable pages of useless back-and-forth dialogue if you had just gotten to the most important bit right off the bat.

TG: i did

TG: i told you i had a dream

TT: That’s true.

TT: I’d almost count that a success were it not for the fact that you spent the twenty minutes directly succeeding that moment talking about my love life and lamenting the fallacies of John Egbert’s pranking style.

TG: so you admit theres a love life going on between the two of you

TG: oh man tzs gonna be so pissed she lost

TT: Lost?

TT: Wait, actually I don’t care.

TT: For someone who literally brought this topic up himself you sure do seem to be doing a good job at derailing the conversation wherever possible.

TT: I mean, do whatever you want, but I was under the impression that you were the one who wanted to talk about this, so.

TG: do you

TT: That’s not the operative question here.

TT: Like, not even remotely.

TG: i mean

TG: i think it kinda is

TG: takes two to tango you know

TG: or in this case two to do a deep dive into arguably the most batshit up the fucking belfry thing theyve ever experienced in their sweet sweet thirteen years of living

TG: which is saying something considering

TG: like

TG: every other batshit up the fucking belfry thing weve collectively dealt with even within the frame of the past four months or something

TT: What specifically do you want to discuss about it?

TT: Aside from the fact that it happened, of course.

TT: Because if that’s the trajectory you’re trying to set this conversation on I’m going to have to request a moratorium of my own.

TG: why

TT: Because there’d be literally no point to that.

TT: What’s the benefit of bringing up a challenging experience to navigate for the both of us for the sole purpose of simply acknowledging it?

TT: It would only serve to cause problems.

TG: so youre down for a deep dive then

TT: What?

TT: I’m trying to understand what you want right now.

TT: And I’m not agreeing to anything until I get where you’re going with this.

TG: i told you already dude

TG: i wanna talk about shit

TG: about what happened

TT: Okay, fine. You hijacked my mission to go to the edge of the comprehensible universe and then blow myself up with a bomb in an effort to keep Jack Noir’s rampant powers in check.  


TT: So the tale goes, I’ve heard, I was horrendously misinformed about everything and we ended up creating the very sun we were trying to destroy.

TT: Also, we both died and became gods. End of story. 

TG: i mean

TG: technically speaking i guess yeah that about covers everything

TG: kinda an abrupt highlight reel though not gonna lie

TG: like im a little mad liv tyler didnt at least get a mention or

TG” and you completely glossed over that really fun conversation we had about sports and shit on derse 

TG: and you know

TG: the part where you stole the fucking mission from me

TG: and were literally going to go get yourself killed all by yourself even though we spent a long ass time talking about it and came to the in my opinion really sound conclusion that i should be the pilot

TG: and almost actually managed to pull all that shit off because you fucking knocked me out with a ball of yarn

TG: but hey

TG: dont sweat the small stuff right

—

_ Then I'm not going to help you wake you up. _

_ I'll stall some more. _

_ so you admit you were stalling with all that bullshit _

_ I said not entirely. _

_ what do you mean _

_ It's going to be a long ride through all this nothingness. _

_ Maybe I just thought some company would be nice. _

_ Before it's all over. _

—

TT: So that’s what this is about. 

TT: Glad we finally managed to get to the point.

TG: yeah

TT: I’m assuming you’re angry.

TG: why would i be angry 

TT: Rhetorical questions are a lot less effective when you’re about as subtle as a brick to the face with them, you know.

TG: im not angry

TG: i just wanna talk about it

TT: You keep saying that like I have any clue what you mean.

TT: A lot happened that day, and each sub-event that took place could dredge up any number of potential conversation topics you're referring to right now.

TT: I’m not a mind reader.

TG: youre a seer

TT: Has watching The Notebook for the tenth time this week yesterday finally caused some essential fuse in your brain to blow or are you just being deliberately obtuse right now?

TT: Seers aren’t mind readers. I know you’re well aware of this. 

TG: were you able to tell what was going to happen

TG: with your powers i mean

TG: like did you look at the situation and be like ok so heres all the ways its gonna go balls to the walls if i let dave do what we agreed on so i better take up the mantle of brain dead self sacrifice and go blow myself up instead

TG: because you know

TG: greater good and shit

TG: you gotta do what you gotta do i get that 

TG: or were you just feeling extra fucking insane that day

TT: I wasn’t a fully realized Seer at that point.

TT: I had spent the majority of my gameplay blowing up my gates and harassing Kanaya for information about the Green Sun. 

TT: I afforded myself little opportunity to climb up the echeladder the way you and John did.

TG: so it was the second thing

TG: you were just being crazy

TT: No, I wasn’t.

TT: Stop acting like I didn’t think it through.

—

Weirdly enough, it’s not getting jumped by some weird, sword-wielding douche bag or jumping out of a window fifty stories up from the ground or even shooting through the furthest reaches of the known universe at a breakneck pace to try and crash land on an entire moon that causes a dull sense of panic to start building in Dave’s stomach; that doesn’t even register until his feet are firmly planted on the moon’s surface and he can make out the figure of Rose sitting in the distance.

There’s a second where, as he pauses, hauling himself to his feet and waiting to see if she’s going to notice his sudden presence and turn around—she doesn’t—Dave wonders if maybe he can get away with her not knowing he’s here. Better yet, he wonders if there’s a way he can send her back to Derse and carry out the mission by himself  _ like he was supposed to.  _ He probably could, honestly; the helpful thing about being a Time player is he can sort of get away with doing a lot of improbable shit so long as he puts it in the context of messing around with timelines, and he’s almost completely certain that he could pull some rewinding business with Rose and cart her ass twenty minutes back into the past, back on Derse, still standing staring at the broken chain. 

He could do it. He could force her to let him do this alone.

So it only feels worse—a whole lot fucking worse, actually—when the subconscious thing inside of him clicks, telling him that even though he really, really should make her leave, he knows he’s not going to.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting to see on her face when she finally seems to process the fact that he’s actually here. Surprise, maybe. Shock. Confusion. Even something bordering on irritation at him having disrupted one of her plans so expertly, if that’s the kind of mood she finds herself in.

What he is totally, completely, unequivocally unprepared for is the sudden lightning bolt of fury—pure, unadulterated fury like he’s never seen from her—that flashes across her face, splitting her features in two. The two of them have only had a handful of face-to-face encounters ansd yet even with those, Dave can already ascertain with near-complete certainty that such glaringly fucking obvious displays of emotion are more than a little out of pocket for ther girl standing in front of him right now. Practically in another spatial hemisphere, that’s how out of pocket they are. And yet here she is, face contorted into an expression of such overt, crystal clear anger that it makes his insides hurt, something heavy and sharp and painfully unfamiliar hardening deep in the pit of his stomach.

_ Guilt,  _ a small part of him offers up. He shoves it down without a second thought.

“What the fuck,” Rose says as Dave opens his mouth to offer forth some sort of coherent explanation for what the fuck he’s doing there, expertly cutting him off before he even gets the first word of his severely improvised tirade out, “are you doing here?”

And just like that, the tirade dies in the back of his mouth. 

“Well?”

“Um.” Dave blinks, then swallows. As far as responses go, not his best.

Rose’s expression darkens by about twenty shades, eyes narrowing further. Yep, definitely not his best. At all. Not even in the slightest. “That’s all you have for me? Fucking  _ um?” _

“I can explain this.” 

“Oh? Can you now?”

He can explain this, actually. He one hundred percent could. It’s just sort of fucking hard to get even a single coherent sentence out with her staring at him like she’s currently living out every extensive fantasyshes ever held of ripping his head off and playing eighteen holes with it as a golf ball, much less some extended explanation as to what is going on right now. 

Mostly because he’s not even sure if there  _ is  _ the extended explanation he knows Rose is looking for here. The narrative starts and stops with pretty much the same thing: she is going to die if she goes on this trip, and as kitschy and cliche and completely fucking bullshit as it sounds, Dave really doesn’t want her to do that alone.

And he could say that. He could say that easy as anything, but something tells him that that’s not the answer Rose is looking for here. 

Not even remotely.

“Um,” Dave offers up again. It’s not good— _ not good _ doesn’t even cover it, really—but it’s better than staying silent. He thinks. 

“This is my mission.” Ice cracks through her voice, splitting her words in two. “Go home. Now.”

“No can do, actually, because I was thinking about everything, and I—”

“Dave, look at me.”

He does. Her gaze is ridiculously, impossibly hard to hold. 

“Does it look like I’m kidding right now?” It really doesn't, but Dave figures that’s sort of a moot point right now. “Go the fuck home.”

He takes a deep, steeling breath, stale air flooding his lungs, filling up every atom of space inside him, pressure building somewhere in the pit of his chest. “No.”

“What?”

Her gaze is only getting harder to meet, so Dave drops his eyes down to focus on the space surrounding her left shoulder. He makes sure to keep his voice flat and firm when he speaks again, though. The less room for argument he allows, the less fucking excruciaying the next part of their exchange is going to be. 

“No,” he says, voice ringing in his own ears. “I’m not going home.”

—

TT: You did this back on Derse, too.

TG: wow i wonder why that might be

TT: I know that was another question of the rhetorical variety but I’d honestly love an answer if you’re even able to find one.

TT: Perhaps you were too engrossed in attaching yourself to Karkat via the metaphorical hip to notice, but as I said, I did my research.

TT: I knew what I was getting into, I knew what would happen because of it, and with the information I had at the time I knew that that was the only outcome in which everyone else would survive.

TT: As we saw it then, Jack was virtually unbeatable so long as the Green Sun remained in place. We would’ve been running from inevitable demise as opposed to what we’re doing now, which is moving towards a battle against a boss we might actually be able to beat.

TT: I know all of this. And I knew it then, too.

TT: You don’t believe I considered all options, ask Kanaya. She was there for the majority of my brainstorming sessions; she can confirm I’m not talking out of my ass here.

TG: clearly you fucking didnt consider all options

TG: saying as again you took the mission from me

TG: what about that option huh

TT: What, you completing the mission instead of me?

TG: yeah

TT: That’s an unequivocally awful option. Hence why I didn’t take it.

TG: oh yeah

TG: cause killing yourself is so much better

TT: It made the most amount of sense, Dave.

TT: Letting you take my place would’ve been illogical.

TG: why is it you who gets to decide that though

TG: like

TG: sure ok you were the fucking emmisary for the gods you were tight with them they probably clued you into a lot more shit than they did for me i get that

TG: but at the end of the day it wasnt just your mission

TG: it was the both of ours

TG: they selected me to help too

TG: and the fact that you didnt even fucking bother to ask me about how cool i would be with you taking the wheel and deciding you should be the one to go do everything yourself 

TG: like yeah you know what that kinda does piss me off

TT: It actually was my mission.

TT: You were there because I needed someone to help me make the map.

TT: The end plan was never for you to be the one to detonate The Tumor. Not in the Horrorterrors’ eyes, and certainly not in mine.

TG: then why didnt you fucking tell me that

TG: couldve saved us both a lot of shit you know

TT: But would you have accepted that?

TT: Would you have been content to know the inner workings of what I was planning on doing and what would happen as a result of that and still sit back and let the course of events unfold without interference?

TT: That’s my daily rhetorical question, by the way.

TT: We both know the answer to that. 

—

“Are you stupid?”

She’s in his face now, eyes narrowed to slits, lip curled back in the beginnings of a literal snarl. Dave’s never really noticed it before, but he realizes now that he has to tip his head down to look her in the eyes. It’s a totally irreverent, inconsequential detail, something that isn't worth devoting even half a second’s worth of thought to, and yet for some reason it's the only thing he’s able to think about as Rose starts practically bearing down on him, hands balled into fists at her sides.

The wind continues to whip around them, their robes catching at their feet. Rose’s hair blows clean off her forehead, throwing her face into sharp relief, her brows smashed together, her expression screwed up. Dave tells himself it’s the wind, it’s the cold, it’s anything but him, and then he stops thinking entirely, because Rose has started speaking again.

Yelling, really. Rose has started yelling. 

“Are you stupuid?” she repeats. “Tell me, are you actually fucking stupid, Dave?”

“I don’t—”

“No, don’t answer that, actually. I’m not interested in the slightest. Just—go home.” There’s a note of finality to her voice that’s so palpable it hits Dave’s stomach like a brick busting through glass. If this was any other situation, if there was anything else on the line, he knows for a fact that he would’ve turned tail the second Rose even so much as looked at him. 

As it is, though, that’s not an option. The further and further they fly out, the less possible it would be for him to turn back to Derse, even if that was something he wanted to do.

Which he really, really fucking doesn’t.

“Go home,” she says again, voice crackling. “Turn back and get the fuck off this moon.”

“It’s my mission.” Dave feels the vibrations of his words in his chest more than he hears them, but the sound must have carried over the sound of rushing around them, because Rose’s expression goes pitch-dark in an instant.

“It isn’t your mission,” she spits out. “This is not your mission. It’s mine.” She jabs a hand at her chest for emphasis. It might just be the wind, but Dave swears he can see her fingertips shaking. “Do you not understand that? The Elder Gods selected me to do this—”

“They selected me, too.”

“No, they fucking didn’t.” She jabs at her chest again, eyes blazing. “Me, Dave, they picked me.”

“Well, I’m here now, so.”

Which is to say:  _ we’re out of time. I can't go back now. Leaving will kill me just as much as staying. _

And she knows this. Her expression doesn’t make it hard to tell that she does, and it’s funny, really, because for all the assumptions Dave made about her prior to them meeting in person, being so transparent that her inner monologue is practically written out across her face was never even close to being one of them.

It’s the extenuating circumstances, though; Dave knows this as much as he knows anything. As much as he knows what's about to happen. As much as he knows Rose is mad at him right now. 

As much as he knows this is the right thing to do.

“Go home,” Rose repeats now, but her voice is softer, hollowed out all of a sudden. The anger is still there—Dave can practically bear it buzzing under her words like a swarm of live bees—but it’s being smoothed down, tamped down until her voice comes out deadened and flat. “Dave.”

“If I leave now, I’ll die,” he says. Because it’s worth saying. Because it’s true.

She just shakes her head at him, eyes blown wide, mouth twisting. 

“Go.”

“Rose—”

_ “Go.” _

“I can’t.” He swallows. “I’m not going to.”

“I—” Something in her voice splinters, cracking in two along the middle. “I—”

And then, with her hair still flying, face still screwed up—against the wind, it’s easier if he tells himself it’s against the wind—robes still billowing out behind her, Rose cuts herself off, turning on her heel and storming through the broken flagpoles and destroyed turrets and piles of brick ruins, disappearing from view.

—

TT: And while we’re on the subject of airing our grievances,

TT: Do you really think your anger takes precedence over mine here?

TG: what

TT: You were the one who crashed the mission.

TT: Not me.

TG: it was my mission in the first place

TT: Hypothetically speaking.

TG: dude

TG: there was literally nothing hypothetical about that

TG: it wasnt like some half assed idea we came up with because we were bored and needed something to stick to until we had a better plan

TG: that was legitimately what we decided was going to happen 

TG: i was going to be the pilot

TG: not you

TT: You’re willfully misunderstanding me.

TT: Previous plans aside, I was the one embarking on that mission. You inserted yourself into the events. 

TG: that is literally what you did

TG: like youre just straight up describing what you did to me

TT: No, I’m not.

TT: Stop being dense.

TG: im not being dense

TG: stop being a dickhead

TT: You’re basing all your grievances off things that didn’t happen.

TT: You’re mad at me because I “took the mission from you,” even though you ended up accompanying me in the end.

TT: If you want to be mad at the principle behind my actions, fine, do whatever you want. 

TT: But you are not the person who gets to be angry with the actual course of events.

TG: why not

TT: Jesus Christ, Dave.

TT: Do I really have to spell this out for you?

—

It takes him twenty two minutes and fifteen—fifteen point six, if he’s being real specific about it—to find Rose again.

She’s sitting on the sole intact part of the near-completely obliterated castle wall that cuts its way across the surface of the moon, heels kicking against the brick, hands folded in her lap. Her back is turned to him as he draws near, trying for no apparent reason to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible, but Dave can tell from the way her shoulders tense all of a sudden, spine going ramrod straight, that she’s heard him coming.

“Rose,” he calls out and her posture somehow gets more rigid, if that’s even possible.

For a second as he draws up to stand right behind her, Dave is almost fully convinced that Rose is just going to freeze him out. Maybe it’s compensation for her freakout back there, maybe it’s to make him feel shitty, maybe it’s just because she’s so pissed she doesn’t know how to speak; all he knows is the bomb is set to go off in under an hour—read: the two of them are set to die—and it’s looking more and ore like the last coherent thing he’s ever going to hear from Rose addressed to him was her shouting  _ go  _ at him a foot from his face.

All and all, it’s not ideal, and though he wants to think it’s deserved, he really, really can’t. Also, the prospect of spending waiting to die in dead silence sounds unappealing beyond description. So Dave is opening his mouth, willing something that will make Rose turn around and strike up a conversation that isn’t predestined to end with her brutally eviscerating him with her knitting needles to fall from his lips, when suddenly she gives a short, sharp laigh.

“So, what is it?”

Dave closes his jaw with a snap. Blinks. Then, “What?”

“Your reason for crashing the mission. What is it?”

He blinks again. This question feels oddly like it has a correct answer, but Dave cannot for the life of him even begin to think what it might be. 

He wonders if that might be the point. 

“I didn’t want you to die—”

“Oh, that’s happening.”

There’s something about the vindication in her tone that makes Dave’s stomach pitch a little, but he pushes the sensation aside as best he can. “I wasn’t finished. I didn’t want you to die alone.”

“A noble sentiment,” she says, scathingness dripping from her words. “Care to hear my hypothesis?”

Dave doesn’t answer. The question is most likely rhetorical, and even if it isn’t, she’s still going to tell him anyways, one way or another. 

“I think you feel like you need to save people,” Rose says, the barest hint of a sneer flickering across her words. “I think you want to save me. You want to feel like you can.”

—

TG: youre gonna do it anyways so yeah sure ill humor you

TG: go tell me why the stick up your ass is convincing you that youre the only one allowed to feel shitty about what happened please

TT: Are you even reading my messages?

TT: I’m not saying that.

TT: What I’m saying is you’re mad at a circumstance that didn’t even take place: me carrying out the mission by myself while you remained back on Derse.

TT: And again, if the sentiment behind my actions bothers you, it bothers you. I’m not going to police your emotions here.

TT: But you cannot fault me for doing something that ended up having zero concrete effect on your decisions.

TT: You still showed up, and you still died.

TT: If anything, I’m the one who should be pissed.

TG: literally why

TG: that was supposed to happen you agreed with me when we made the decision that i was going to die

TT: No, it wasn’t. 

TT: You were supposed to stay on Derse. 

TT: You were supposed to stay on Derse and I was supposed to carry out the mission by myself.

TT: That was the plan.

TG: so youre mad at me because i screwed up your plan

TG: thats it thats what youre pissed about

TG: god i mean i knew you were neurotic about everything going your way all the time but this is taking that shit to a whole new level 

TT: I’m not mad that you interrupted a plan of mine.

TT: I’m mad that you interrupted that one specifically.

TG: ok and that makes you any less neurotic how

TT: Because you made me watch you die.

—

“This isn’t a savior thing,” Dave says, and despite her earlier tone, the look Rose throws over her shoulder at him is sad, sad through and through and fucking through.

“Isn’t it always with you?”

—

TT: I could give less of a shit about you interfering with a plan of mine.

TT: You do so on a daily basis.

TT: But that wasn’t just any other plan. That was a virtual suicide mission which I was supposed to go on.

TT: By myself. 

TT: I didn’t want you to go not because I wanted the glory for myself or because I needed everything to go the way I envisioned it. That’s ridiculous.

TT: I didn’t want you going because I didn’t want you to fucking die, Dave.

TT: And you went anyways and I had to stand there and watch the fucking clock tick down believing with one hundred percent certainty that neither of us would be coming back from that and knowing with even more conviction that the only reason you were being subjected to this fate was because of me.

TT: I had to sit there knowing I had led you to your death and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

—

“I mean, isn’t it?” Her gaze flits back to you for a split second, harder than it was the last time, the anger resurfacing as quickly as it disappeared. “Think about it.”

Dave really doesn’t want to do that. For a large number of reasons.

“Isn’t so much Your proclivity for putting yourself at risk—”

“Rose, no offense, but if that’s the kind of shit you’re going to throw at me right now, I gotta be real with you: you really do not have a leg to stand on there.”

“—your tendency for self-sacrifice—”

“Again, the legs.”

“—your willingness to pick battles you know you can’t win.”

“Such as?”

“This.” And now she turns to face him again, the old anger rising to her face, too, not just her voice. Her eyes blaze as she stares at him—through him, she’s always looking through him, it feels like. “I mean, god, what else would you call even this if not some half-baked attempt at exercising your latent white knight tendencies?”

“I don’t have  _ white knight tendencies—” _

“Why did you follow me?”

Dave feels frustration, sharp and hot, bubble up in the back of his throat. He shoves it down as much as he can. Fighting now will do neither of them any good. They have an hour left to live; Dave would love to spend that time doing literally anything other than trying to verbally rip his ecto-sister’s throat out.

Still, he can’t help himself. “Why’d you knock me out?”

“You weren’t supposed to come on this mission.” She says it like it’s simple, and honestly, maybe to her it fucking is. “I told you, if I had another option”

“I mean, not fucking doing that seems like a pretty good option to me. Did you consider that one?”

Her glare sharpens. “Of course I did.”

“So, what, then?”

“My intention wasn’t to put you in this position. I wanted the opposite, in fact. Hence my frustration.”

He isn’t really sure what to say to that they won’t end in another fight, so Dave just drops his gaze, the top of his head suddenly prickling where her stare burns into it, and kicks at the rubble at his feet for a second, his shoes staining reddish-purple with ceramic dust. The weight of the silence between the two of them keeps growing until Dave half-feels like he can’t breathe under it, and it’s in that space that a strange, heavy sense of frustration starts to mount within him.

This was his mission. Before it was hers, it was his. Fuck that noise about her being the pilot; that was  _ his  _ job. The job the fucking Elder Gods selected him for, or whatever, sure, but more importantly it was the job that he and Rose agreed on. He would drive the moon, she would stay on the remains of Derse. He would detonate the bomb, she would relay the necessary information onto John and Jade.

He would die, she wouldn’t. That was the plan.  _ That  _ was the fucking plan.

“I didn’t want to put you in this position either,” he says aloud, because there’s no point in starting a fight, there’s no point in wasting their remaining minutes by starting a fucking fight.

Rose’s lips quirk in a humorless smile. “Seems like you blew that objective clean out of the water, then.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“You chose to come here,” she fires back. 

“And you didn’t?”

“It was my mission.”

“No, it fucking wasn’t, Rose,” Dave snaps, a little louder than he intended. Rose’s eyebrows arch in surprise for a split second before she paints her expression back to one of cold neutrality. “We agreed I would go at the beginning—”

“Things change.”

“Yeah, no shit things fucking changed. You think I didn’t notice that?” He makes a sweeping gesture at the planet around them, at the fate they’re sealing for themselves with every second they sit here, a bomb the size of a small moon sitting stored away in Rose’s sylladex, the perfect crystallization of their fate. “What I’m saying is we had a plan, and then you fucked it up. Sure, I fucked up the fucked up version, but you were the one who started all this shit in the first place.”

“The plan was not good.” Rose’s eyes narrow dangerously. “It was an objectively awful one.”

“Then why’d you agree to it in the first place?”

She spreads her hands. “Would you have given me another option?”

_ Yes  _ is the correct answer,  _ no  _ is the true one. “I would’ve listened,” Dave says aloud, a poor attempt at meeting in the middle.

She doesn’t bat an eye in response. “That’s a lie.”

“You don’t fucking know that.”

“You really think I’m supposed to have spent three years being your friend and come out the other side believing that sort of horseshit?” Rose tips her head to the side, gaze flashing almost sympathetic for a second. “Really, Dave.”

Dave huffs, folding his arms across his chest. “Well, you don’t.”

“You’re infinitely more transparent than you make yourself out to be.”

“And you’ve got your head so far up your own ass‚”

“Real mature, Dave—”

“I can’t fuckng believe—”

“It was my mission—”

“It wasn’t your fucking—”

_ “My—” _

“I  _ swear— _ ”

—

TG: and you thought it wouldn't be the same for me

TG: what do you think i dont give a shit about you or something

TT: I didn’t say that.

TG: then holy fuck rose what are you saying

TG: that youre allowed to kill yourself and im not

TG: that its totally cool if you go on a fucking fender bender and get yourself stabbed throught the stomach and wake up obviously out of your mind with like the billion and one repressed emotions that are all starting to come back and bite you in the ass and make the executive decision to be like 

TG: hey you know that plan me and dave cooked up about how to take jack out well turns out i think im the only one whos allowed to be dumb and self sacrifical so im actually going to take the reigns

TG: but plot twist im not gonna tell dave about it

TG: im just going to throw some fucking op ass ball of yarn at his head and knock him out and then spew psychobabble about dreams and fucking football to keep him distracted so he doesnt interrupt me literally trying to kill myself

TG: like

TG: why do you get to do all that but when i try and pull the same shit its suddenly such an issue

TT: Because we had an agreement.

TG: yeah we had an agreement that i was going to fucking go rose

TG: not you

TG: like

TG: jesus how do you think that shit felt for me

TT: You would’ve gotten over it.

TG: and what

TG: you wouldnt have

TT: That’s not the important talking point here.

TG: ok well heres my important fucking talking point

TG: i wouldnt have

TG: gotten over it i mean

TG: like

TG: not to be fucking lame or whatever

TG: and i swear to fucking god rose if you give me shit for this im gonna drop kick your ass into the residential sector in can town

TG: but that is really not something i can seem myself just like

TG: getting over

TG: like im not saying id flip my fucking lid and like throw myself off the side of the meteor in some elaborate act of self flaggelation or anything

TG: but at the same time i wouldnt be all like oh cool my best friend slash sister cause apparently thats a thing now just got herself killed forever damn sucks for her i guess 

TG: like it wouldve fucked me up

TG: and probably for a long time

TT: I think you’re making it out to be a lot worse than it is.

TG: oh my fucking god what did i literally just say about you giving me shit for this

TT: I’m not giving you shit.

TG: also literally

TG: you dont get to decide how i like

TG: feel about shit

TG: if i said this was going to mess me up then guess what

TG: it was probably going to mess me the fuck up rose

TG: that point isnt suddenly negated just because you dont want to feel bad about getting all self destructive on my ass

TT: Ok, ok.

TT: Sorry.

TG: like

TG: my god do i really have to spell this shit out for you

TT: Spell what out?

—

At some point, they stop. 

“We’re talking in circles,” Rose mutters, staring down at her hands. She sounds defeated. 

“I know.”

He does too.

—

TG: that i care about you

TG: that you doing something like this wouldve really fucking sucked ass and dick and also balls because i care about you 

TG: okay

TG: like

TG: i dont even know 

TT: I’m sorry.

TT: I just didn’t want you to die.

TT: I got tunnel vision after that.

TG: yeah no shit

TG: god

TT: I’m sorry, ok?

TT: Genuinely.

TT: It wasn’t my intention to cause you any harm. The opposite, in fact.

TG: no i know

TG: im sorry too i guess

TG: because i did technically crash the mission

TG: even though you crashed it first but whatever moot point

TT: We can agree to disagree there.

—

“Can I sit?” Dave asks, gesturing to the empty space on the wall beside her. For one long, terrifying second he thinks she’s going to say no.

But then she lets out a tiny sigh and shuffles over Dave drops himself beside her, propping his heels up on the edge of the wall in front of him, legs pulled to his chest, chin on his knees. Beside him, the tension seems to have finally fully left Rose; she sits slumped in on herself, shoulders rounded, hands hanging limply in her lap.

Dave watches out of the corner of his eye in silence as she takes a deep breath in, holds it, and then exhales loudly, shoulders falling even more.

“I don’t want you to die,” she mumbles. “I think that was it, really.”

He swallows down something building in the back of his throat. There’s no time for any of that now.

“I don’t want you to either.”

She huffs out a laugh, sucked dry of any humor that might’ve once been there. “Success on both our fronts, then.”

Dave doesn’t really have something to say in response to that, so he just presses his forehead into his knees and closes his eyes. Beside him, Rose pulls her own knees to her chest and does the same.

—

TT: And at any rate, nothing happened.

TT: Nothing that was supposed to, at least.

TT: We’re both still here. Both still functioning. 

TT: The descriptor “well” could even be added to that statement if you were feeling particularly benevolent.

TG: yeah

TG: just thinking about what couldve happened gives me the creeps though

TG: if the quest beds hadnt been there

TG: or if something had gotten messed up

TG: and it freaks me out even more thinking of all that stuff and then picturing you doing the mission all by yourself

TG: like

TG: man

TG: that wouldve been so fucked up

TG: even more than it was already

TT: I hope you can understand that my feeling run along similar wavelengths.

TT: You going alone was a viable option for me right up until the point where it wasn’t, and then suddenly I don’t think I could've come up with a solution I was more adverse to even if I wanted to do so.

TT: You dying just didn’t compute to me.

TT: It wasn’t going to happen.

TT: Turns out I was wrong about that, but, well.

TG: sleeping dogs and shit

TT: Quite.

—

They stand at the edge of a universe.

The quest beds are rock solid and cold, too reminiscent of what Dave’s always thought a morgue slab feels like, so he opts for sitting at the edge of his, legs swinging over the bottomless void opening up beneath them. Beside him, Rose does the same, hands still folded neatly in her lap. Her expression’s been since scrubbed clean of any latent emotion; as she sits there now, she looks calm, almost bored.

With thirty seconds left on the clock, he turns to her.

“Just so you know,” he says, his voice both too loud and too quiet, too flat and too shaky, the perfect dichotomy, “if there’s anyone I had to go travel to the edge of the known universe and then blow myself to smithereens with, I’m glad it’s you.”

It’s trite and ill-fitting, not nearly what he wants to say to her, but it’ll have to do. He’s never been good at this sort of stuff, the heart-to-hearts, the vulnerable confessions, the secret reveals, and there sure as hell isn’t enough time to learn now.

That makes him, he thinks, really fucking sad to think about, so he doesn’t.

Beside him, Rose blinks once, long and slow, and then reaches out across the gap separating them to grab his hand. 

They stand at the edge of the universe. The bomb explodes. They begin again.

—

TG: so

TT: So.

TG: i dont know about you 

TG: but all that expounding my pent up bullshit onto you made me super fucking hungry

TG: how about you

TT: I could eat.

TT: Common room in ten?

TT: If we’re lucky maybe we can run into Karkat and be privy to another live documentation of his struggles with learning how to operate a human stove.

TT: I’ll even bring my journal to take some notes.

TG: fuck yeah

TG: i hope he sets the paper towels on fire again

TG: that shit was hysterical

TT: We should be so lucky.

TT: See you in a bit, ok?

TG: alright

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! -- 

TT: I’m glad you’re not dead.

TT: Just so we’re clear on the matter.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now online! --

TG: yeah

TG: im glad you arent either

TG: see you in a sec

TT: See you in a sec.


End file.
